From India comes the incredible story of a young man who reconstructed an ‘extinct’ musical instrument using clues in ancient literature.

Called the Yazh, this gorgeous harp, carved in the form of a peacock and aided by a resonator, was played for Tamil kings 2,000 years ago, but hasn’t been manufactured for years, perhaps even centuries.

His passion for Indian instruments led him to start an instrument company called Uru, which is now selling these harps all over the world.

Profiled in a feature for the Better India, Tharun Sekar picked up instrument making at university while studying for an architecture degree. Born in Chennai, the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Sekar was comfortable making guitars and ukuleles, but felt a calling to do something different.

“After finishing college, I was considering instrument-making full-time,” says Sekar. “While Western instruments are popular, I was driven by the question of why our instruments weren’t reaching a global audience.”

He never intended to start making Yazh (Sekar never uses the definite article) but came upon it when a friend asked him if he knew how to make one. Looking into it, Sekar realized there was virtually no information on how Yazh is crafted, played, or even what it sounded like.

The mystery left him entranced, and soon, with the help of some friends, he was consulting the canon of ancient Tamil literature.

“We started to read works of literature like Silapathikaram… where there was a mention about Yazh,” he told the Better India. “We won’t have direct information about the instrument but rather it would be hidden behind uvamai (metaphors in Tamil)—[p]hrases like ‘the sound of Yazh was like honey’, ‘the bend of Yazh was like the belly of an eight-month pregnant woman.’”

From this he managed to formulate an idea over what the instrument looked like. For sounds, he took references from the canon and compared them with related instruments from other regions like the Greek lyre or an antique harp from Burma.

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The literature mentions several components common in stringed instruments such as tuning keys, a resonator, and a bridge (where the strings connect to the body).

It took Sekar a year, with the help of local experts in brasswork, to make his first Yazh, but now he can crank out several in a year. All are handcarved wood and metal, made to order, in different sizes. There are some the size of the harps played by minstrels in the Middle Ages, but other Yazh are very tall and come with a stand to support the weight of the bass-drum-sized resonator.

Its sound lies somewhere between a sitar, western lyre, and a banjo.

Uru Instruments has sold around 80 Yazh to customers from Canada, the US, UK, Germany, India, and other countries.

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Along with starting a band that produces music on traditional Tamil instruments, Uru Instruments, led by Shekar, is now pursuing a goal of reviving an antique or lost instrument from each Indian state: a noble goal if ever there were one.

“Right now, we want to work on each state in India and find out an important instrument from that state,” Shekar told the Better India. We are in the search for that.”

LISTEN to the sound of the Yazh from below…